Succulents and More™

Of all the shrubs in the garden, my favorite is Acacia aphylla . This oddball from Western Australia lacks traditional leaves (hence the common name “leafless rock wattle”). Instead, its zigzaggy blue-green stems perform photosynthesis. These stems, which give the plant its striking sculptural appearance, are adapted to reduce water loss in the dry, arid conditions where it naturally grows – not so different from here. From a distance, Acacia aphylla looks like a bluish cloud hovering over the sidewalk bed. In late winter, mid- to late-February, it’s covered with bright yellow ball-shaped flowers. This is what it looked like this year: The red-flowering shrub behind it is Grevillea ‘Scarlet Sprite’, thought to be a hybrid of Grevillea rosmarinifolia and another unknown grevillea: I like the two together, but both were getting too large for this spot – or any spot in our small garden. This is what Acacia aphylla looked like yesterday morning: With curbside yard-waste pickup coming up ...

It’s been a while since I talked about the palo blanco tree ( Mariosousa heterophylla ) in our front yard; my last update was almost a year ago ( here ). Since I do get asked about it now and then, I want to share some photos of what it looks like now: As you can see, it looks fantastic. It’s been blooming for 5+ weeks now, with more flowers than ever before. Maybe because we had such a mild spring with plenty of rain? Palo blanco (“white stick” in Spanish, not to be confused with palo verde, “green stick”) is a slow-growing acacia native to the Mexican state of Sonora where it grows on hot rocky slopes. The Ruth Bancroft Garden website has a nice write-up about it . We wanted a desert tree that’s open and airy, with tiny leaves, and that’s exactly what we got. Our palo blanco is planted in the larger of the two succulent mounds inside the front yard fence and provides very light shade from noon on. As I mentioned, it’s been flowering more heavily this year than ever before. Unlike the...

A reader recently asked how the palo blanco tree ( Mariosousa heterophylla ) in our front yard was doing. Time for an update! First of all, in spite of the similar name, the palo blanco is not related to the palo verde. “Palo” simply means “stick” in Spanish, so one is “white stick,” the other “green stick.” The palo blanco ( Mariosousa  heterophylla ) is a slow-growing acacia native to the Mexican state of Sonora where it grows on hot rocky slopes. The palo verde ( Parkinsonsia sp.) is a group of fast-growing trees in the pea family native to semi-desert regions from Arizona south to Argentina; the ‘Desert Museum’ hybrid has become a popular street tree, not only in Arizona and Southern California, but increasingly up here in Northern California. I fell in love with the palo blanco years ago when I first saw it at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona. After I became aware of its existence, I started to notice it all over the place, both in the Phoenix and the Tucson are...

Last week, I engaged in a bout of frenzied cleaning in preparation for a visit from Portland friends and fellow bloggers Ann Amato ( Amateur Bot-Ann-Ist ) and Evan Bean ( The Practical Plant Geek ). Since things looked so nice—and, most of all, relatively free of the bamboo litter that is a constant annoyance—I took a series of photos to document the state of the front garden in November 2021.  This post shows the area outside the 4-foot fence, in essence the L-shaped planting bed along the sidewalk. Part 2  focuses on the area inside the fence. Since our garden is so small and I'm such an impatient gardener, I constantly change things up. As a result, the garden will never be mature in the traditional sense. There are areas that are reasonably well settled while others have recently been redone. I don't mind this one bit. In fact, I like things being in flux, otherwise I would get bored. On this note, let's get started. There's a lot going on here—too much. I'm tem...